Protect & Restore (PPR) provides fast backup and best-in-class recovery capabilities. It ties in seamlessly with hypervisors for agentless backups, VM replication and instant restores. This makes PPR the ideal solution for IT admins of complex IT infrastructures and companies with rather small and basic installations alike. The central management console allows the user to configure backup and retention policies, storage locations, and perform restores, all conveniently from one console.

Maximized Business Continuity

Reduced downtime through optimized RPO and RTO

Reliable and fast restores to similar or different hardware

Restore VMs in minutes from replica

Remote operation of backups and restores

Set-and-forget operation

Reduced IT Overhead and Cost

Minimizing backup windows and storage footprint

Cutting storage requirements by up to 80%

Leverage VMs for powerful and cost-effective DR strategies

Low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

Simplified Management

Backup/restore VMs and physical machines from one single console

Archive to off-site locations via Idealstor solution

Save time and eliminate risk

Future-proof investment

Scalability for growing environments or medium to large enterprises

Support of most advanced hardware and operating systems

Fast backup times and reduced overhead on target machines and backup servers

vSphere Protection

Agentless backup of guests

Significantly enhances backup performance, while minimizing the load on target machines and the hypervisor during the process. PPR enables to back up entirely any online or offline virtual machine hosted by vSphere (Windows, Linux, etc.)

Agentless replication of guests

Replication provides the best RTO, as it utilizes clones (replicas) of target machines on a certain ESX datastore

Agent-based backup of fault-tolerant systems and non-commersial ESX

Since agentless protection through the VMware snapshot mechanism is unavailable for VMware fault-tolerant systems and guests hosted by a non-commersial ESX, PPR enables to protect them through on-site agents

Replica launch

The specified replica will be correctly detached from the replication process and then launched, which may take only a couple of seconds, allowing PPR Admin to get a failed system back on track with minimal downtime

Restore to original/new location

When restored to the original location, the original machine will be automatically deleted. When restored to a new location Administrator will be prompted to provide a new name for the machine, and a host and datastore to reside it. The VM configuration file will be modified accordingly

VMware CBT support

The use of VMware Changed Block Tracking ensures full or incremental backups or replicas are created with the minimum time and impact on ESX

Paragon ITE support

Paragon’s Image Transfer Engine is an alternative way of tracking data changes. It’s automatically used when VMware CBT fails

Agentless backup of guests

Agent-based backup of Hyper-V host

PPR can protect Hyper-V hosts in their entirely or by individual volumes, through an embedded physical agent

Restore VMs to original/new location

When restored to the original location, the original virtual machine will be automatically deleted. When restored to a new location, the Administrator will be prompted to provide a new name for the virtual machine, as well as a host and datastore to associate with it. The VM configuration file will be modified accordingly

Paragon ITE support

Paragon’s Image Transfer Engine is used to track data changes, ensuring full or incremental backups are created fast, with minimum impact on the Hyper-V host

Physical Machines Protection

Agent-based physical backup

A special agent embedded to every target Windows-based physical machine interacts with the infrastructure and accomplishes backup tasks

Granular backup

One-Stop-Wizard for immediate protection

One-Stop-Wizard helps to instantly configure and initiate protection of a single physical server or workstation

Out of domain backup

PPR enables to protect not only members of a domain where it is deployed, but any machine on the net

Remote restore

Administrator can initiate recovery of data (non-system) volumes remotely from one of the management consoles

Bare-metal recovery

The problem machine is started up from a special WinPE recovery media. After connection to the infrastructure, Administrator manually specifies the desired machine, volume, and restore point

Paragon Recovery-ID

Automatically and remotely perform a restore operation without local user-interaction

Restore to dissimilar hardware

Allows Administrator to restore a Windows-based machine directly to dissimilar hardware without having to reinstall OS, applications, and re-configure the system

MS Exchange Protection

Application-level protection

PPR can treat MS Exchange 2007/2010/2013 at the application level, opening up the option to create consistent database backups without any impact on the production email server

Incremental chains and block-level data deduplication

Usage of incremental backups allows additional flexibility by having different time-stamps while block-level delta for full backups contributes to minimization of backup storage requirements

PSingle instant block backup

Even when creating a full backup, PPR analyzes and transfers only blocks of databases which have been changed since the last backup, thus providing for the server load optimization and backup storage minimization

Automated recovery from broken increments

When MS Exchange refuses to allow creating an incremental backup, PPR automatically initiates a full backup

Wide restore options at database level

PPR enables to restore separate data stores or storage groups or all groups at once either to the original or some alternative location with the option to create a dialtone database if necessary

Flexible restore at mailbox level

PPR also allows non-destructive restore of certain mailboxes. By default, their contents will be restored to the original location, provided none of the already existed email items are lost. If necessary, Administrator can specify any mailbox and a folder where you’d like the restored data to be placed to

Supported storage ties

Multi-tier storage infrastructure

PPR has a solid solution to the problem of dual protection. Dual backup or replication to managed (fully controlled by PPR infrastructure) storages or archiving of backup data from managed to unmanaged storages (like Tape or FTP/SFTP that PPR infrastructure cannot control) enables to double protect target systems with minimal impact on the production environment

Enhanced backup format

Paragon introduces a pVHD (Paragon Virtual Hard Drive) format – a special VHD, optimized for storing backups of virtual and physical machines. It’s very efficient in handling incremental chains, data de-duplication and synchronization. pVHD does away with all limitations of a standard virtual drive format, such as a poor compression ratio, integrity control, and encryption capabilities. As a result it allows obtaining backups that are up to four times smaller than original backup objects

Backup data deduplication

Significantly reduces backup storage footprint. By linking existing local and network backup storages to a local deduplication storage, Administrator can make sure storages do not contain data duplicates, thus significantly cutting on storage requirements. Besides, deduplication enables to cut even more on network traffic, as again only unique blocks of data are transferred to storages, thus having a positive effect on backup timings, RTOs and RPOs of company’s IT infrastructure

Flexible scheduling mechanism

Protection policies can be scheduled from every few minutes (nCDP – near Contonuous Data Protection) to hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly

Enhanced data retention mechanism

Enables to effectively control backup lifespan and occupied space on storages

File-level recovery

PPR allows browsing contents of virtual or physical backup images as well as VM replicas to do granular recovery of separate files and/or folders. Required data can be restored either locally (on a machine where PPR Console is installed) or to a network share, provided the original directory structure is kept intact if necessary

Instant restore

Instant restore (launch out of backup image) is available through NFS (Network File System) or UIM (Paragon’s Universal Image Mounter)

Storage Browser

For easier administration all storages are open for browsing. Having a list of all created backups and replicas at hand, Administrator can easily find and initiate an integrity checkup for those he considers critical, or delete those he doesn’t need any more, or initiate restore

Microsoft VSS support

The use of Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Copy Service allows 100% data consistency when taking snapshots of Windows machines

Backup data exclude/include filters

Migration between ESX datastores

Enables to migrate a virtual machine hosted by ESX to another datastore

P2P (Physical-to-Physical) migration

No hardware dependency with Paragon Adaptive RestoreTM; our technology guarantees that any Windows since 2000 will boot on dissimilar hardware by automatically injecting required drivers and performing other operations crucial for this type of migration

V2P (Virtual-to-Physical) migration

V2V (Virtual-to-Virtual) migration

PPR provides the option to migrate virtual servers and workstations from VMware ESX to Hyper-V and vice versa with minimal effort

Management and Administration

Distributed architecture

Offers scalability for growing environments and medium to large departmentalized enterprises

PPR management console

Centralized, easy-to-use interface to manage all virtual and physical machines from the same console

Realtime statistics, notifications, and reporting

PPR includes smart tools of monitoring. PPR Console can help to get real-time statistics on any activity executed at the moment, filter error, warning or information infrastructure events, set up email notifications and reports by a particular type of events or several types (errors, warnings, information, etc.) for an infrastructure component or activity you’re interested in (backup or replica policies, etc.)

Effective troubleshooting

Every user or service activity is journalized, which enables to pin-point roots of any encountered problem. For more efficient communication with Paragon’s support team, there’s Log Saver that allows easily collecting all or particular infrastructure logs

Easy update / upgrade

All infrastructure components can be upgraded remotely from PPR Console, guaranteeing complete consistency of the infrastructure database

Intelligent load balancing

Unlike other tools that use simple round-robin algorithms to balance load across the backup infrastructure, our solution considers Backup Server’s availability, access to source data, current backup repository load by other concurrent tasks, and other factors

Domain administrator must have permissions of the local domain administrator on all machines that join PPR infrastructure
Services Running WMI service (Windows Management Instrumentation)

Open TCP ports: 135, 18950, 60543, or disabled Firewalls on all computers included into PPR infrastructure

File and Printer Sharing is allowed in Firewall, which enables default system shares on local volumes (ADMIN$, C$, D$, etc.)

PPR Agents

Operating system

Microsoft® Windows® XP SP3

Windows Vista

Windows 7

Windows 8

Windows 8.1

Windows Server® 2003 SP2

Windows Server 2008 R1/R2

Windows Server 2012 R1/R2

New Windows Hyper-V Server 2012

Architecture

32/64-bit

Memory

2GB or higher

Hypervisors

VMware® vSphere® 5.1, 5.0, 4.1, and 4.0

VMware ESX® and VMware ESXi™ 4.x and 5.x

Non-commercial VMware ESX**

Microsoft Hyper-V

Microsoft Exchange

Exchange Server 2007/2010/2013

Single Copy Clusters support

Cluster Continuous Replication support

Agentless protection of vSphere guest machines

PPR offers fast and reliable agentless disk-imaging backup or replication of online and offline Windows, Linux or other OS guest machines supported by VMware. The use of VMware CBT (Changed Block Tracking) and the patent-pending Paragon’s ITE (Image Transfer Engine) ensure full and incremental images are created with the minimum time and impact on vSphere. Flexible retention policies, enhanced data processing methods, automatic exclusion of irrelevant data, and the innovative pVHD format allow the optimal usage of backup storages. Employment of MS VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) when taking snapshots of Windows machines, guarantees data consistency. Introduction of Paragon’s ProTran®, a unique data transport protocol and a two-tier storage infrastructure, open up further minimization of backup windows and network traffic for simultaneously made images.

Backing up vSphere guests

Unlike traditional backup tools designed to work with physical machines, PPR can operate at the virtualization layer and directly employ the VMware snapshot mechanism to do backups. It doesn’t need an agent on a target virtual machine to create its point-in-time copy including its configuration, operating system, apps, etc. This approach significantly enhances the backup performance, while minimizing the load on target machines and the hypervisor during the process. Besides, there’s no need to provide credentials for every guest to do backups.

Replicating vSphere guests

For high-availability virtual environments that run the first tier applications, PPR complements VM Backup with VM Replication. Replication provides the best RTO (Recovery Time Objective), for this technique implies creation of clones (replicas) of target machines on a certain ESX datastore and their registering on the host under different names. Replicas are stored uncompressed in their native format, thus they are ready-to-go at any moment. All changes since the initial full replica are written to VMware native snapshot files, acting as restore points, thus allowing the usage of the VMware revert-to-snapshot mechanism to further accelerate disaster recovery scenarios, providing for almost zero downtime operation.

Recovering vSphere guests

With PPR you can recover a virtual machine to any good-to-know point in time and place it to the original or a new location. When restored to the original location, the original machine will be deleted (it should be offline). When restored to a new location you will be prompted to provide a new name for the machine, a host and datastore to reside it, virtual disk type, and network properties. Our product will change the VM configuration file and store the target machine according to the defined location. For replicas the whole disaster recovery procedure comes just to its launch, which may take only a couple of seconds.

Agent-based protection of physical machines

PPR offers agent-based backup of Windows physical machines. Any Windows OS computer on the network can be protected entirely, by separate volumes or drive letters. Almost all technologies used for the agentless protection of VMware ESX guests are also available for machines protected through on-site agents (MS VSS, Paragon’s ITE, ProTran, GoForSure, pVHD). By embedding a special plug-in, users can monitor backup activities on target machines through the system tray. Wake-on-LAN Assistant allows waking up remote target machines to do backup. There’s no need to install it on all machines that require it – the administrator just picks one and it will automatically wake up all others that share the same subnet when needed.

Backing up physical machines

Target machines should be added to the infrastructure directly from the console or on-site to embed a special agent that will interact with the infrastructure and accomplish backup tasks. It’s possible to create a special policy that will periodically check Active Directory OUs for new members to automatically add them to the infrastructure. When setting up a physical backup policy, you can specify as a backup object entire computers or separate volumes. All backup images are being highly compressed during creation by using redundant data exclusion filters and Paragon’s VHD backup format, which eases the backup storage requirements.